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Marketing Rebels
February 22, 2024
Good morning. It's Thursday, Feb. 22, and we're covering raiding economic relief fund, a $45,000 donation to the RNC, 7 most realistic options for the Steelers, and much more. First time reading? Sign up here.
American Fact of the Day!
Tennessee: Maxwell House Coffee was originally named for a luxury hotel in downtown Nashville in 1895. Some say the famous slogan “good to the last drop” was coined in 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt was served coffee by Maxwell House coffee company and proclaimed it to be “good to the last drop.”
Breaking Updates
Democratic California State Senator Steven Bradford Proposes Raiding Economic Relief Fund for Reparations
A California State Senator - a Democrat, of course - is proposing to raid a special fund for economic uncertainties to establish a fund for "reparations." Because California has plenty of cash to throw around, one would suppose.
California law requires unspent money from the state's General Fund to go to the Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties (SFEU), a reserve that lawmakers have broad discretion to use for public purposes. Democratic state senator Steven Bradford's S.B. 1331 would require the state's controller, its chief fiscal officer, to put 6 percent of the money transferred to the SFEU into a reparations fund the bill would create.
Reparations for what, one wonders? Slavery was never legal in American California. It wasn't exactly in the Jim Crow part of the country. This begs the question: "Who is getting paid, and for what?" It turns out that Senator Bradford can answer that question.
The reparations fund would give money to "policies that indemnify African-American descendants of a chattel enslaved person or descendants of a free black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century." Bradford's bill came days before a government watchdog warned that California's budget deficit swelled to $73 billion, due to a $24 billion decrease in revenues.
Read more updates here
One of the Biggest Unions in the Country Just Made a $45,000 Donation to the RNC
Labor unions are notoriously left-leaning in both leadership and in political action. While many blue-collar workers who are a part of the biggest unions in the country are split between Republicans and Democrats, the unions as a whole are very much pro-Democrat.
The Teamsters’ political committee has given $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, according to federal records, a significant departure for a powerful organized labor group that has more recently supported Democrats, such as President Biden, who have championed workers’ rights.
The union sent out the contribution — the maximum allowed from the union’s political action committee — to the RNC the same day former president Donald Trump met with Teamsters’ leadership for the second time in January.
The Teamsters occasionally make small political contributions through its political action committee to Republican candidates and PACS, but the donation to the RNC departs from its usual spending. It is the union’s first contribution to the RNC since it donated $15,000 in 2004, according to data on Open Secrets, a Washington nonprofit that tracks campaign finance contributions.
Read more updates here
